I'm struggling to write my book review of Toni Morrison's Beloved, which, quite frankly, left me speechless. After turning the last page, I found myself in one of my favorite reading predicaments: there was nothing for me to do but sit there and feel the story wash over me. I couldn't analyze, I could vocalize, I could only be with the narrative. A day later, I still feel like that's all I can do. But I'll try.

Beloved is inspired by the story of a fugitive slave, Margaret Garner, who, to save her children from returning to a life of slavery, tried to kill them and succeeded in killing one of them. Sethe, Morrison's character, struggles with her community's disdain, her children's fear, and her own broken heart after killing her Beloved. Her solution is to suppress memories of the past. However, when Beloved finds a way to reenter Sethe's life, she and her family are forced come to grips with their history.

Virginia Woolf argued that literature should reflect that "Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.” Morrison's smoothly executed narrative style, which weaves into the minds and memories of many of her characters, exemplifies this method of stroytelling, slowly illuminating the characters' history and bringing to light their most hidden secrets. Instead of developing in a linear, chronological way, the story of Beloved takes the reader deeper and deeper into the characters' traumatic pasts and pummeled hearts.

It is not an easy journey. As a powerfully written narrative that brings life to historical accounts of slavery's brutality, Beloved confronts its reader with scenes of physical and emotional abuse and images of broken, violated men and women trying to stay whole amidst the crushing realities of slavery, which linger long after the story's characters have crossed to the North. Just as the character Beloved forces Sethe's family to acknowledge and actively work to recover from its tragic past, the novel Beloved, with its eloquent and heart-wrenching accounts, begs America to do the same.

You are my face; I am you. Why did you leave me who am you?